Driving Down Memory Lane: 10 Cars We Love

As thoughts turn to love this Valentine's Day, we take time to acknowledge the automotive objects of our affection. These are the cars we love.

Yes, it is possible to love a car, just as it is possible to hate a car. Cars are funny that way. They can inspire a whole range of emotions, even among those who see them simply as a means of getting from Point A to Point B. For the truly afflicted among us, cars leave an indelible mark upon our lives.

Even on Valentine's Day, though, it's hard to show our appreciation to the cars we love. After all, there aren't heart-shaped bottles of engine oil. But we can acknowledge them with some pretty awesome photos. So instead of wasting money on overpriced flowers or a lousy dinner in a crowded restaurant, sit back, crank up some Golden Earring and imagine yourself on a stretch of deserted road. It's time to fall in love all over again.

Ferrari 250 GTO

I know, I know. It’s an easy, almost obvious choice, but c’mon — it’s the Ferrari GTO. It isn’t about what it costs (Roughly $30 million, give or take, in the unlikely event you find one for sale). It isn’t about it being an icon. Hell — it isn’t even about it being heartbreakingly beautiful.

I love the Ferrari 250 GTO for what it was, and what it remains: a pitch-perfect symphony of speed and style. It was a car you could drive to a race, take first place and drive home again. The Ferrari 250 GTO was the last of the true sports racers built by the best automaker on the planet, and as such it will always be special. — Tony Borroz

Photo: Ferrari

Lotus Elan

Legendary automotive genius-slash-cheapskate Colin Chapman built it. British engineering whiz Ron Hickman designed it. It weighs around 1,600 pounds and produces just over 100 horsepower. Its chassis is made of sheet steel so thin you can bend it with your bare hands. McLaren F1 designer Gordon Murray famously called the 1962–1975 Lotus Elan the greatest sports car ever built, and he may have been right.

He also may have been bonkers.

I bought an Elan last year, having wanted one since I was 8. It sits in my garage, a perfect counterpart to my 1988 BMW M3 that never breaks, never leaks and seems entirely too normal. The Elan, by contrast, is nothing but abnormality. Its doors and top don't keep water out. Its fiberglass body doesn't rust, but its spindly backbone frame — packaging genius, even if you can't work on it without slicing off a knuckle — cracks and falls apart if you have the audacity to actually drive the car on modern roads. Its lack of reliability is legendary: If there are three ways for an Elan part to break or fail, each of them will occur, often simultaneously. Oil leaks resemble Niagara Falls, only black.

These complaints disappear the moment you drive it. The engine sings, the straight-line performance rivals that of modern cars, and the steering is perfect. The suspension works like every suspension has ever worked in your dreams — comfortable and yet razor-sharp, with impossibly immediate turn-in. I don't love the Lotus, I adore it. I also kind of hate it, but that's mostly because it swallowed a pint of my blood when I replaced the motor mounts last month. Love is a funny thing. Abusive relationships are relationships, too. And if I wanted a vanilla existence, I'd go buy a Mazda Miata and marry someone comatose. What a horrible, fantastic, frustrating, amazing little car. — Sam Smith

Photo: Sam Smith

Saab 9-5

It's depressing to be alone on Valentine's Day, nursing the wounds of a recent breakup. That's just what owners of 2011 Saab 9-5s are experiencing, devoid of heart-shaped boxes of chewy Russell Stovers or the warm comfort of a factory warranty's embrace. Like most star-crossed lovers, Saab buyers entered relationships with their cars based more on emotion than reason, and tragedy predictably ensued. "This time will be different," they rationalized, falsely comforted by promises of full maintenance, all the while ignoring the automaker's Laser Red balance sheet and vague ties to the Russian underworld.

But as the J. Geils Band so eloquently sang, love stinks. Your dealer is gone, repairs aren't guaranteed and even the Saab museum is being auctioned to the highest bidder. We feel your pain. Though it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel now, we know you'll love again. The 9-5 wasn't even good enough for you -- nothing more than a last-generation Buick in a tight dress, and certainly no Saab Sonett or 900 SPG. We know a great Volvo S60 you could take for a test drive, and we bet you'd really hit it off. But for now, wallow in your misery and unpaid repair bills. Just make sure to hit the "Night Panel" button so the mechanic can't tell that you're crying in the driver's seat. —Keith Barry

Photo: Saab

Pontiac Bonneville

My grandfather worked for Pontiac his entire life, which meant he always had a new car in the driveway. My earliest memory of these glorious cars is of sticking my finger into the tip of Annabelle’s cigarette lighter. “Oh Jimmy,” my grandmother said as I screamed from the back seat, “you don’t mess with Grandma’s magic car.”

Annabelle was magical indeed, a beautiful 1967 Pontiac Bonneville the color of Grand Traverse Bay on a summer afternoon. My mother inherited her and took us everywhere in that car: soccer practice, football games, church on Sunday mornings and to school on those rare occasions we missed the bus. It wasn’t a car so much as a boat, a big barge of American steel floating along as if on a cloud.

By the time I got my learner’s permit, Annabelle had gone to the junk heap and was replaced by a ‘76 Bonneville as blue as the open ocean. If Annabelle was as cool as a summer breeze, that ’76 was hotter than a $20 iPhone. Annabelle made me love riding, and the beast that replaced her made me love driving.

That four-wheeled barge and I went everywhere together: out Old Mission Peninsula to the lighthouse, on road trips to Grand Rapids and around and around and around the downtown strip. That car taught me how to drive, and in the end I taught it how to fly. It’s a long story, but suffice to say when the ambulance finally arrived everyone was amazed I was alive, let alone suffering from nothing more than a split lip.

In the years since, I’ve owned faster cars, more practical cars and cars that certainly got better gas mileage. But every once in awhile, when I’m on the road with the wind in my hair, the stereo up loud and the road stretching ahead, I can’t help but remember that old Bonneville, the car that made me love driving. — Jim Merithew, Wired.com photo director

Image: General Motors

1987 Buick Grand National GNX

There's nothing subtle about the Buick Grand National. It oozes late '80s mustachioed sleaze. It's not a performance car you drive to the country club. It's a performance car that compels country club members to call the police and complain about drug-dealing gangbangers driving too close to the main gate.

This is the car that, even now, seems all too appropriate with Boston's "More Than a Feeling" blasting through a pair of 6x9s. This is the car that only came in one color, black, just to make an angry statement. This is the car in which perpetually pissed-off malcontents hide their guns. Look at the absurdly blocky lines. Look at the cheesy interior. Look at the ridiculous rear windows. These aren't deliberate design statements. They're vestigial holdovers from the car's progenitor, the Buick Regal, a vehicle designed to make middle-class middle-managers stuck in dead-end jobs feel like coddled royalty. And that's one reason I love the GNX: It looks so incredibly wrong, it's actually right.

But the 1987 GNX would be nothing without its obscene power from a turbocharged V6 hitting about 300 horsepower and 400 pound-feet of torque. These are the car’s honest-to-God dyno numbers, not the watered-down BS General Motors advertised. It can do 0 to 60 in 4.5 seconds. Think about that: 4.5 seconds. In a Buick. The GNX was the fastest American car you could buy in 1987, and it could run with the best Italian exotics of the day. Well, at least until the first curve. Then all bets were off.

E30 BMW 325is

Size matters. So does simplicity. Ask anyone who’s driven an E30 325is. The two-door “compact executive car” — just big enough to cram three friends into the back seat in a pinch — couldn’t have been any less complicated: a 2.5-liter straight six driving the rear wheels through a 5-speed manual and a limited-slip differential. It was small, it was basic and it weighed scarcely more than a Mazda Miata. It was what every modern BMW aspires to be: the ultimate driving machine.

The 325is is too often overlooked in favor of the manic E30 M3, but it was a better driver’s car if you drove everywhere, every day. The inline-six was impossibly smooth and torquey, making it both easy to drive and respectably fast. It made 167 horsepower, which may not sound like much today but in a car weighting just 2,850 pounds was enough to spin the tires in the first three gears.

I especially love the 1989-1992 models with the more desirable small bumpers. It hit the automotive sweet spot, combining classic attributes like small tires, five speeds and ridiculous simplicity with modern features like ABS, fuel injection and modern safety equipment. BMWs have in the years since the E30 skewed toward ever larger, heavier and, frankly, less involving automobiles, leaving gearheads to long for the days when BMW truly built the Ultimate Driving Machine. — Wes Siler

Photo: BMW

McLaren F1

Who didn't fall in love with the McLaren F1 when obsessive-compulsive genius Ron Dennis unleashed it in 1992? Any sentient sports car aficionado felt irresistibly drawn to such a pure design in a worldd sullied by compromise.

No expense was spared in the pursuit of perfection, from the pioneering use of a carbon fiber monocoque to the screaming 6.1-liter BMW V12 to the two Kevlar fans that literally sucked the car toward the ground to increase downforce. The engine bay even featured heat shields made of gold foil. It was a racecar for the street, a 243-mph missile that weighed about as much as a Mazda Miata. The F1 was so potent that McLaren had to tone it down before competing in the 24 Hours of Le Mans — which it won, naturally.

Though I've got an impending date with the stunning new McLaren MP4-12C, I've never driven an F1 — and, likely never will. During a pilgrimage to BMW's Classic Center in Munich while working on my coffee table book Legendary Race Cars, I was denied a request to merely sit in one; so rare is this supercar, of which only 100 or so were built. Jay Leno recently told me the 12C just might be more satisfying to drive. As much as I respect Jay's opinion on all things wheeled, the McLaren F1 always will be the one that got away. — Basem Wasef

Photo: McLaren Automotive

Mercedes-Benz 500 E

Ah, the 500 E. This sleeper was a sublime mix of class and power, an autobahn ace putting down 322 horsepower from a 5.0-liter V8. It could hit 60 mph in less than 5.5 seconds. Even now, those figures are impressive. In 1991, they were staggering.

Although it wore Benz badges and was based on the big E Class sedan, the 500 E was built with help from Porsche. That’s right, the Panamera isn’t first sedan to roll out of a Porsche factory. The process was almost laughably laborious, requiring 18 days and several trips between the two companies’ factories to complete each car.

In a day when the amazing BMW M5 can rip your lips off and the Porsche Panamera is fast enough to warp time, it’s easy to wonder what makes the Mercedes-Benz 500 E so special. Simple. The 500 E sat at the intersection of modern engineering and old-world craftsmanship, and it was built not because it should be, but because it could be. — Jason Kambitsis

Photo: Mercedes-Benz

1970 Porsche 911S

The company's top model, the 911S, was a 2.2-liter, 180-horsepower sports car unencumbered by the weight of the safety and emission mandates soon to saddle and shackle so many cars. At less than 2,300 pounds, the Porsche 911S offered as pure a driving experience as could be imagined.

But the joy of driving a 1970 911S is but part of the experience. To sit behind the wheel is to revel in the glory of a year in which Porsche all but dominated motorsports. In 1970 Porsche won the Rally Monte Carlo (in a 911S), the overall Rally title, the 24 Hours of Daytona, the 24 Hours of LeMans (for the first time) and the Targa Florio to name just a few. Oh, and when Steve McQueen needed a car to drive during the opening sequence of the movie Le Mans, he of course drove a 1970 Porsche 911S.

More than 40 years later, the 1970 Porsche 911S remains one of the finest sports cars ever. — Jason Paur

Photo: Porsche

Volkswagen Super Beetle

The car I love most is a car I never drove.

It was a 1973 Volkswagen Super Beetle, green with a black vinyl interior that would char your skin on a hot summer day. My parents bought it early in the Carter administration, a decidedly low-key replacement for the '67 Chevrolet Impala convertible that finally bought the farm. The Bug was as slow as it was archaic. I have no idea how many miles it had when we bought it, but it trundled all over creation and back without complaint. Still, even a Beetle won’t run forever, especially one that leaked so heavily you'd have thought it was British. When it finally came time to rebuild the engine, dad fired up the heater in the garage, cracked open a dog-eared copy of How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive and set to work.

He was 32, I was 12. He’d never attempted anything so daunting as rebuilding an engine, even one so simple as a Beetle boxer four. It took us the better part of the winter, working here and there as my father’s schedule and budget, not to mention a particularly brutal Iowa winter, allowed. That car opened my eyes to the wonder of internal combustion and instilled in me a love of all things mechanical. I learned how to gap a spark plug, find top dead center and adjust a carburetor. More than that, I learned the value of patience, the importance of precision and the feeling of pride that accompanies a job well done. Those lessons have served me well, even if I haven't always heeded them.

The Beetle moved on a few years later, and my father died in October. As I was going through his office, I found that copy of How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive. I could only smile as I leafed through pages bearing greasy fingerprints left by a father teaching his son about much more than engine repair. That book sits on a shelf in my living room, a reminder that cars sometimes take us on journeys that continue long after we reach our destination. — Chuck Squatriglia